Which Character are You?

I finally saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday... and I couldn't get to sleep last night (or sleep past 6 this morning) from thinking about it. If you haven't seen it, though, don't worry. I'm adept at not spoiling the plot of movies. You won't find any clues in here about what goes on in the film.

I've always identified myself with Hermoine--book smart and loyal--yet I discovered while watching the film that I find links to many of the HP characters, even Dumbledore (perhaps it's the professor in me). The only character I consistently don't identify with is Ron Weasley. 

But this is not new. I find myself identifying with other characters in other books, too, in various ways. That is the magic of literature, a power writing has to create a fictive world which ties strongly to the real one we are living within, despite huge differences between worlds. I can feel, for a few hours, as if I am Harry Potter, undervalued, lonely, yet capable of great things. I can feel like Emma Bovary, unsatisfied with my world as it is, wondering how to make it better (even if I wouldn't make the choices she did in Flaubert's novel). It seems many readers identified themselves with Emma, and some claimed Flaubert wrote the novel based on them, yet when asked who Emma was, he said, "C'est moi." ("It is I.")

I may most identify with the main character of Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword, for she seems utterly ordinary, yet finds herself drawn, inexplicably, to a world far different than her known world... and others see the potential in her long before she realizes it herself (rather like Harry Potter). I also identify with Spider Man (yes, yes, I said it!), mainly because my talents are hidden to most people--both by chance and by my own design.

With whom do you identify? What characters are most like you? Feel free to choose any book or film you like, or several characters from several books or films, but tell me what characters resemble you. Perhaps we have a few characters in common.

Mythic Characters

I am, and have always been, fascinated by myth. When I was a kid, while siblings watched regular movies, I loved The Ten Commandments, Clash of the Titans, and Ben Hur. Now, two of these are particularly Judeo-Christian, but, unlike many people, I consider them to be myth in the same lines with other kinds of myth, including Native American, Greek, Norse, Chinese, etc. The term myth doesn't assume such stories are unreal. If anything, myth suggests the stories are more real than we even know--not literally, but intuitively real. 

You see, rather than telling us literally how the story began, creation myths suggest the meaning of life, its purpose, and our role in our own existence and world. Who ate the apple isn't truly that interesting... it's the why that fascinates me.

Another blog friend, Exchange of Realities, sparked this thought today, and I realized that much of what I wrote was based in myth. My second novel was based on Noah's Ark and Ovid's flood version--Pyrrha and Deucalion--and I am now considering creating a YA version of Job. I'd love to do other spin-offs, too. I'd have to avoid most of the Zeus stories, though... too much rape, and I don't write rape (at least not at this point).

But I'd like to take names. What stories do you find fascinating in myth? Any fairy tales that still interest you? Robin McKinley's made a pretty extensive career out of writing new versions of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Beauty and the Beast" (her book Beauty is still one of my all-time favorites), so why can't I? I'd love to do a cool version of "Thousandfurs."

What would you like to see? What would you like to write?